Buttermilk Pancake Recipe by Stephanie Alexander

I don’t cook as much as I should. When I saw Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion collecting dust on my shelf after it was given to me as a gift about a year ago I thought I should put it to good use. Seems like everyone is telling me that book is their ‘cooking bible’. I can see why. The book is pretty much a cookbook for non-cooks. The first thing that struck me is that the recipes are really easy to follow. The second is that there is no food photography for any of her recipes so it’s really up to your imagination on what you think the end result might look like. So I thought to use my imagination, style it, and photography it on how I think one of her recipes may look (from the perspective of someone who is not a cook).

I thought to start off with something nice and simple. I’m sure anyone who spends more time in their own kitchen than I do would have taken a lot less time than I did to make her Buttermilk Pancakes. First advice in following a recipe is make sure you have all the ingredients and don’t take short cuts. I thought I could do without the bi-carbonate soda in making pancakes because I didn’t have any in the pantry. Nope, unless you were aiming for thin crepes and unless you have the magic touch of handling crepes to perfection make sure you have all the ingredients. Remember my end result of whatever I was cooking had to be photogenic. I’ll spare you the detail of how many utensils I used and cleaned up afterwards just to make these pancakes for the Blog but let’s just say the pancakes weren’t made in time for breakfast but closer to lunch.

This is the end result finally, how I think Stephanie Alexander’s buttermilk pancakes with banana, berries and honey would look. The honey I used by the way is the premium organic Mudgee honey from Honey Australia.

Ingredients

3 eggs, separated

2 cups buttermilk

60g butter, melted

300 g plain flour (except I used wholemeal flour)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Extra butter or oil spray

Method

1. Beat the egg yolks well. Them whisk buttermilk and melted butter

2. Sift dry ingredients over egg mixture and fold in

3. When you are ready to cook pancakes, whisk egg whites to soft peaks and fold into batter

4. Lightly grease a heavy based frying pan and ladle in about ¼ cup batter

5. Cook until bubbles form on uncooked side

6. Flip with wide spatula and cook other side (although I didn’t have a wide spatula so I transferred it to another plate and flipped it upside down into the pan)

7. Transfer pancakes to a plate in a low oven until then are ready and then serve without delay.

You can purchase Stephanie Alexander’s book or download the Iphone App. I have both. The App is easy because if you are doing grocery shopping you can easily look up what you need to get if you have a dish you want to cook for the day in mind.

My next recipe to do is a baked fish which although it was delicious it was not photogenic at all (due to some rough handling on my part) so I will try that again next week and see whether it becomes bloggable. Stay tuned!

www.stephaniealexander.com.au